TRAM Product Planning

The upcoming rollout, which will deploy the technologies by March 31, 2016, is part of Denso's drive to boost sales of sensors, the crucial eyes and ears of tomorrow's safety systems.

Cars without these features will be hard-pressed to achieve the top five-star rating. And European adoption of more stringent rules is expected to force other markets, such as the United States and Japan, to raise the bar as well.

But it trails European rivals such as Robert Bosch GmBH and Continental AG in advanced safety sensors. Denso's bread-and-butter products are drivetrain components and air conditioners.

But deployment is rapidly moving downmarket because of stricter European Union safety rules taking effect in 2015. The Euro New Car Assessment Program, or Euro NCAP, rates vehicle safety and increasingly will test for crash avoidance technologies.

The components include systems using camera-based optical sensors, millimeter wave radar and laser radar.

That is because the regulations set a baseline for sensor performance that must be met by all carmakers. And the clear specifications make it easier to develop standardized sensors. Standardization, in turn, allows for higher volume and lower costs, meaning a wider array of customers can use the same part.

"This skips a whole generation of S class -- it went into the future. It is 70 percent autonomous driving."

Available first on the S-class sedan as a $2,800 option, Intelligent Drive also is offered on the re-engineered 2014 E-class lineup. Much of the technology will trickle down to the redesigned 2015 C-class sedan that goes on sale in the fall. Some features are even available on the smaller B-class Electric Drive that went on sale last month.

The take rate on Intelligent Drive for the S-class sedan is 50 percent. It falls to 15 percent for the E class.

For Mercedes, having this edge is a competitive weapon in the luxury segment, where quality, gadgets and horsepower are no longer significant differentiators.

Hyundai with its new Genesis is the closest but the competition is probably three years behind

The one-piece wraparound look enables Lincoln to extend its signature taillights across the liftgate and around to the side without interruption by shut lines. The taillights contain 163 LEDs

The system senses if a collision is imminent, and if the driver doesn’t respond, it autonomously brakes the car at speeds up to 124 mph. It also can brake to avoid a stationary vehicle ahead and to prevent rear collisions.

The C300 all-wheel-drive goes on sale in a few weeks and will cost $41,325, including shipping.

The more powerful C400 4Matic starts at $49,515, including shipping, and also debuts later this month. It is a new model.

In the next two years, a C-class coupe, convertible and plug-in hybrid will be rolled out in the United States

The U.S. version is expected to be sourced from Mazda’s new plant in Salamanca, Mexico, which opened earlier this year and makes the Mazda3.

The fourth-generation Mazda2, called the Demio in Japan, will go on sale here in the fall, Mazda said in a statement. It will hit American showrooms in 2015.

U.S. sales of the outgoing Mazda2 surged 42 percent to 7,957 vehicles in the first six months of the year, from 5,594 the year before, as the carmaker cleared out inventories.

But last year, sales of the aging nameplate, which is getting its first full redesign in seven years, slumped 39 percent to 11,757.

That ranked it near the bottom of the subcompact segment, way below such rivals as the Chevrolet Sonic, the Ford Fiesta, the Honda Fit, the Kia Soul, the Nissan Versa, the Hyundai Accent and the Toyota Yaris.

The next Mazda2 will also provide the basis for a new subcompact sedan from Toyota Motor Corp. That car will be made in Salamanca, where Mazda has allocated about 50,000 vehicles for Toyota from its full annual capacity of 230,000 units. While that car will get Skyactiv underpinnings, including a Skyactiv engine, it will have a Toyota-designed body. Output for Toyota is expected to begin after April 1, 2015, but before March 31, 2016.

The strategy underscores how Toyota is playing catch-up in a fundamental field, as rivals gain on the automaker's top fleet average fuel economy in the United States with big advancements in such fuel-saving technologies as direct injection, turbocharging and stop-start systems. For years, Toyota has focused on its best-selling gasoline-electric hybrid systems. It hasn't abandoned that track.

Toyota is seeking fuel economy increases of up to 30 percent and cost cuts on key components of up to 50 percent.

"Just like putting something beautiful on top of your hairdo, by using kanzashi through such things as turbocharging or downsizing, you can improve the performance of the engine."Kanzashi add-ons may include direct fuel injection, exhaust gas recirculation systems or stop-start technologies that turn off the engine when the vehicle stops.

The EPA's annual report on fuel economy trends, which calculates automakers' fleet average fuel economy based on sales, shows Toyota losing ground to rivals such as Nissan and Mazda. For example, in 2010, Toyota's U.S. fleet average fuel economy was 25.4 mpg. In 2013, it was 25.2 mpg. Meanwhile, Mazda improved from 24.4 mpg in 2010 to 27.5 mpg in 2013, and Nissan rose from 23.3 mpg to 24.6 mpg during the period.

"Eventually we think this is where the technology is going, but right now we don't know what the reaction of U.S. customers will be," he said. "So probably right up until the last moment, we will have to be ready with both and watch customer feedback."

American upstart may have some difficulty attracting notice among the clamour of a noisy, contentious market.

Lincoln itself is in crisis at the moment

It will demur from an arms race with would-be German rivals who benchmark their cars against one another with lap times. The modern Lincoln aims to deliver simple dynamic precision with a relaxed ambiance.

Lincoln’s current MKZ sedan was a half-step in this direction, but the MKC fulfills the mission more completely

And the company plans to replace its larger MKX crossover and MKS full-size sedan with new models that raise the luxury bar even further.

The FCV will go on sale in Japan first, in April 2015, for the equivalent of about $70,000, with US and European launches planned for the summer.

the FCV would only go on sale in areas like California and Germany, where adequate hydrogen refueling stations and delivery infrastructure existed

cruising range of 700km (about 435 miles

compressed hydrogen’s higher energy density and its ease of storage and transport

The vehicle refuels in just three minutes and only emits water vapor.

Ford engineers saw room to improve the efficacy of knee-level airbags

The market for automotive chips is projected to grow 6.1 percent to $27.9 billion this year, according to IHS Corp. Within that business, sales of chips for automated driver-assistance systems, or ADAS, will increase an average of 13 percent a year through 2020, making it the fastest-growing area.

Intel, Qualcomm and NVIDIA, which make some of the fastest processors available. All three say they’ve got products in the market or coming that meet the most stringent automotive requirements.

NVIDIA said its processors are now powerful enough that they can be partitioned -- devoting part to functions that must work no matter what, and others to information and entertainment, where hiccups are less dangerous.

Qualcomm

has won the majority of orders to add the latest wireless modems into cars, and expects that by 2017 as many as 60 percent of cars will have cellular connections.

It all comes from the cloud,” Singh said. “Otherwise you have to put terabytes of data into the car’s trunk.”

Top-of-the line Audi models use more than 6,000 semiconductors.

“Make no mistake -- my objective is to drive this into volume, not just luxury German vehicles,” said Elliot Garbus, Intel’s vice president of automotive. “We need to drive it into entry-level vehicles.”

Intel is aiming to win more orders by offering carmakers whole systems -- software and computers built on its chips -- that it says can cut the time and cost it takes to build features into cars. New functions such as tracking eye movement to monitor a driver’s attention will require faster processing, he said.

Qualcomm

is working on chipsets that provide multiple functions for cars, including cellular connections, and expects that to be the basis for an expansion of its revenue in the industry

Mitsubishi Electric, a Tier 1 supplier in Mason, Ohio, hopes the technology will be used in 2018 model vehicles, but has not yet signed any agreements with automakers for FLEXConnect, Doug Ray, a Mitsubishi Electric audio, video and communications director, told reporters Monday.

Mitsubishi Electric partnered with other companies -- such as Apple, Google and Garmin -- to develop FLEXConnect.

Bollore’s Bluecars, used in the Autolib car-share program in Paris, can travel about 150 miles per charge

Batteries made by Bollore’s Blue Solutions in France’s Brittany province are cheaper than lithium ion cells used in other electric cars, holding down the cost of his small vehicles

Along with expanding to other U.S. regions such as California, Bollore said he wants to offer his car-share service and electric vehicles to China and other markets.